


fear (learned/unlearned)

by magicandlight, the_robin_woman



Series: The States [37]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Gen, Happy Ending, I don't know, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Pride, Riley is my aro-ace baby, maybe? - Freeform, possibly, pride month
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-30
Updated: 2018-06-30
Packaged: 2019-05-31 00:35:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15108050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicandlight/pseuds/magicandlight, https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_robin_woman/pseuds/the_robin_woman
Summary: "I'm scared," Cass says.Riley looks away from the stars and towards the other state sitting on the hood of the car beside him.Here, on this land split between their borders with both of their names on the deed, it's okay to admit that.





	fear (learned/unlearned)

_1940_

"I'm scared," Cass says.

Riley looks away from the stars and towards the other state sitting on the hood of the car beside him.

Here, on this land split between their borders with both of their names on the deed, it's okay to admit that. Here, there was nothing but the corn and the small farmhouse and the stars. In Chicago, Cass would go back to the woman with the government job who couldn't show an ounce of emotion if she wanted to be taken seriously.

Riley doesn't ask her to elaborate. She will on her own.

"Did you know they're saying that lobotomies can cure homosexuality?"

Riley shudders.

Lobotomies had always seemed fundamentally wrong. It was one thing to cut away the diseases, and an entirely different thing to stick a knife in a functioning being's brain.

Riley and Cass aren't the same. Cass is a lesbian, always was, always will be. Riley is something else- he just doesn't feel attraction.

Both things are considered mental disorders. Both have heard therapists tell them over and over that they are  _wrong_ , that they are  _broken_ , that they are  _diseased_.

(At home, Monty and Cam refuse to do psych evaluations anymore. Nicky and Brooke turn their backs to their Catholic roots. Cal hides who she is for the sake of her human lovers. Nate drinks and drugs himself into oblivion to forget.)

Fear is something ugly and dark in their chests, these days, where loving the wrong gender gets you a one-way ticket to the nuthouse.   
  
  


_1941_

Alfred calls ahead to tell Sera to expect them, to get the medical equipment ready, they know neutrality is done for.   
  
  
  


_1945_

Riley holds her hair back when she throws up after Dachau is liberated.

She looks at those pink triangles and almost throws up again.

The troops are mixed, but there are a few of hers here, and their presence grounds her enough that she doesn't.

(There are no women wearing those pink triangles. She isn't sure she wants to know what became of the women like her.)

<<<<<<<<<<<

Tim looks as sick as she is when he tells her what became of lesbians in these camps.

He doesn't meet her eyes when he tells her what happened to the ones with blonde hair and blue eyes.

Cass can't look in the mirror for a long time after that.   
  
  


_1953_

The United States watches as Eisenhower signs Executive Order 10450.

They watch as homosexuals are banned from government work.

Cal runs her hands through her hair. "Is it too late to get Truman back?"

No one laughs.   
  
  


_1954_

Cass shows up in Indianapolis one day, tears streaming down her face.

She smiles weakly. "They fired me. One of the guys complained. They fired me. No questions asked."  
  
  


_1957_

Adam's nose gets broken because someone saw him kiss Nicky, and they all watch as Alfred's smile shatters when they tell him.

Del gets called a security risk more times than any of them can count, the word  _lesbian_  spat in her face. She goes undercover for the CIA, where they don't care who she is so much as what she is, and what she can do with a sniper rifle.

Kendall and Tim left their capital homes one summer and surrounded themselves with a forest almost as old as they are and found peace in the state house they had grown up in. Alfred had given them the deed as a joint birthday present one year, after the horrors of the civil war. Cordelia drove down one autumn to help with the remodeling. No one is around to judge them when they kiss.

Evangeline bears it all with a smile, but the way she shuffles and reshuffles her tarot cards reveals her uneasiness. She goes to church, even though no one's sure if she's doing for faith or punishing herself for her color, for her magic, for her sexuality. There are so many reasons she can be told she's going to hell these days, she points out with a smile.

Brooke carries her knives everywhere these days- the slender, decorative stilettos tucked into her bun like hairpins.

She offered Cass a set, and Cass had agreed without a second thought. She kept one tucked into her waistband when she wore pants and into a garter sheath left from her mafia days when she wore skirts.

The other one she gave to Riley.

Riley tucks it into his pocket and watches as his siblings internalize the hurts of this century.   
  
  


_1961_

They're having their one of their region (family) dinners when Cass tells them about the law being enacted.

"I'm going to decriminalize sodomy."

Michael chokes on his water. Corey gives him an unimpressed look, before she turns to Cass. "Perhaps you should have worked up to that instead of leading with it?"

Which, fair. Riley nods his agreement across the table.

Oliver pushes the celery on his plate away with his fork and looks relieved when Tyler takes it. "When does it become effective? January?"

"Yep." Cass leans over to steal the roll from Mindy's plate.

Oliver nods. "Cool."  
  
  


_1963_

It is 1963 and Ev looks at all of them and says  _please_.

So they march for Evangeline and Drew and the other states with their mixed skin tones and for their own people, too.  
  
  


_1969_

Stonewall happens, and the fear isn't quite so choking now.   
  
  


_1970_

Cass calls Brooke the week before the march. She has to get her number from Michael, who got it from Adrien.

"There's going to be a parade in Chicago on the anniversary." She tells the other girl.

Brooke hums, bright and cheery. "I've got one too. Cal's got one in LA."

Cass smiles.

<<<<<<<<<<<

Riley comes with her to the parade, and they link their arms together as they march. For the first time in a long time, they both hold their heads high.   
  
  


_1973_

"They're declassifying homosexuality. It won't be a psychiatric disorder anymore."

Cass chokes on her drink.

When Riley had called saying he was going off to the farm that weekend, she'd thought it was just because he needed to get away from Indianapolis for a while.

Not because he wanted to tell her  _that_.

Riley is laughing at her when she finally stops coughing, and Cass shoves him off the hood of the car.   
  
  


_1979_

Sixteen years later, and they're all in DC for another march.

Cal is passing out rainbow flags, and no one really wants to know how many she has or how much she paid for them. Somehow, she convinces Austin to wear his as a cape.

Cecilia drives down for it, and Cass feels brave with the rainbow flag draped over her shoulders so she kisses Cecilia in the middle of the street.   
  
  


_1993_

It feels a bit like going backwards when "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is signed into law.

Everyone just looks tired. The states look their age, world-weary and bone-tired and none of them can tell how much of that is their own emotion and how much is an echo from their people.  
  
  


_2000_

There is something sort of peaceful about picking corn by hand.

Mostly, it's just tiring.

They had come down to the farmhouse for the weekend to try and knock out all of the upkeep at once.

"Why do we still plant corn, again?" Cass was frowning at her wheelbarrow.

Riley groaned. "I don't even know."

They needed to repaint the outside of the farmhouse, too. All the shutters were fading into a gray color and the white paint was chipped.

"Hey, Cass?"

She turned to glance at Riley.

He gave her a half-smile. "It's called asexuality."

Cass made a squeaky noise before she threw herself at him. "I'm so happy for you! There's a word!"  
  
  


_2003_

Sera is good at keeping up with things, which is why she's in charge of the weekly emails with updates from the entire country.

Cass skims through it, glancing over the one about NASA so she'll know about whatever Corey's excited about.

She's just about to delete the email when she skims over a word and freezes.

_Supreme Court: Lawrence v. Texas. Lawrence, 6-3. Strikes down the sodomy law in Texas. Makes same-sex sexual activity legal in every U.S. state and territory._  
  
  


_2006_

"I think I'm aromantic." Riley says after Chicago pride that year when they go to a ice cream store. They alternate every year what city they celebrate with- Chicago or Indianapolis.

Cass nods. She has ice cream on her nose and rainbow facepaint on her cheeks. "Okay."

Riley nods, some small part of him relieved by her casual attitude, and steals a spoonful of Cass's ice cream.  
  
  


_2010_

That year, when Cass comes to pride with him in Indianapolis, she doesn't bring him a rainbow flag.

The one she hands to him is four stripes- black, grey, white, and purple.

He frowns at her as she ties her own rainbow flag around her waist the same way she does her jackets. "What's this?"

Cass raises her eyebrows. "It's the asexual flag. Thought you'd want it."  
  
  


_2011_

Cass groans as her phone continues to ping with text alerts.

Cecilia wrinkles her nose, pulling her pillow over her head, yanking the blanket over her head too for good measure. "Make it shut up,  _please_."

Cass reaches out, feeling for her phone.

It takes awhile to make sense of the text notifications. The first one is from Sera, and simply reads  _don't ask don't tell repealed_

"Cecy, babe."

This manages to get Cecilia to come out of the blankets.

Cass might be crying as she shoves her phone at Cecilia.

Cecilia understands faster than Cass did. She tosses the phone somewhere into the comforter to hug Cass.   
  
  


_2012_

_Sera: abc. interview_

_Sera: now_

_Charlie: why?_

_Alfred: what's going on?_

_Cam: oh_

_Callie: !!!!!!!!!!_

Cass's coffee goes cold, and on TV a president supports marriage equality for the first time.   
  
  


_2015_

Sera had requested for the meeting to be in DC and used the rarely-seen puppy dog eyes to make Alfred agree.

It isn't until news alerts sound from half the phones in the room that they realize  _of course Sera had known what was being heard in the Supreme Court and that was why she wanted to host_.

Same-sex marriages are legalized nation-wide, and none of them can really focus on policy when they can feel the echoes of their people happiness, so eventually, Ginny sighs and dismisses the meeting.

Riley buys pretzels from an overpriced street vendor while Cass texts Cecilia and wordlessly hands her one.

Cass grins and they sit on a park bench.

If he reaches out, he can feel some of his people somewhere within the city, and he lets their emotions intertwine with his for a moment.

Cass pulls him back by nudging him with her foot. "Hey, wanna go see if we can find popcorn?"

Riley smiles. "Yeah."

He stands, and both of their phones ping with text alerts at the same time.

It's nothing more than Alfred sending the groupchat a location, which Cass clicks.

Riley peers over her shoulder. "Dad sent us the White House."

Cass shrugs. "Wanna go see?"

<<<<<<<<<<<

They see the lights as soon as they turn the corner.

The White House, lit up in rainbow colors.

Cass is crying beside him. "It's beautiful." She whispers softly.

Riley links his hand with his sister's.

"It is beautiful," He agrees.

**Author's Note:**

> 1940  
> -lobotomies were performed on gay people in order to 'cure' them, and they could be involuntarily committed by their families to psychiatric institutions where they were subjected to shock treatments, forced sterilizations, and of course, lobotomies. The most common lobotomy was called an ice pick lobotomy for the tool used and left many of the perfectly healthy men and women it was performed on permanently disabled.
> 
> 1945  
> -Lesbians were not persecuted as much as gay men because it was believed that despite their sexuality they could still become wives and mothers. Lesbians that were sent to concentration camps did not wear the pink triangle badge that gay men wore, they wore the black triangle for 'asocials', a broad category of all the people 'unfit for society'. This makes it hard to determine exactly how many lesbians were sent to concentration camps. Many of the lesbians in concentration camps were sent to work in the camp brothels to 'fix' them in what is today called corrective rape. Aryan (blonde haired, blue eyed, fair skinned) lesbians in particular were subjected to corrective rape as it was seen that they had the best genetics to carry on the German race. This would have been hard to hear for Cass, as she is blonde and blue-eyed.
> 
> 1953  
> -President Eisenhower issued Executive Order 10450 in 1953, banning homosexuals from government work. Gay men and lesbians were said to be security risks and communist sympathizers, and therefore became the targets of McCarthyism and witch hunts during what is called the Lavender Scare.
> 
> -Government officials intentionally campaigned to make "homosexual" synonymous with "Communist traitor" such that LGBT people were treated as a national security threat stemming from the belief they were susceptible to blackmail and exploitation.
> 
> 1954  
> -During Eisenhower's presidency, thousands of lesbian and gay applicants were barred from federal employment and over 5,000 federal employees were fired under suspicions of being homosexual.
> 
> 1961  
> -On July 28, 1961, Illinois enacted the Laws of Illinois 1961, a new state law code, that became effective on January 1, 1962, and eliminated the state's sodomy laws.
> 
> 1963  
> -The Civil Rights March on Washington. In August, more than a quarter of a million people of diverse ethnicities attended the event, sprawling from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial onto the and around the reflecting pool.
> 
> 1969  
> -The Stonewall riots widely considered to constitute the most important event leading to the gay liberation movement and the modern fight for LGBT rights in the United States occur on June 28, 1969.
> 
> 1970  
> -The first gay pride parades are held in NYC, LA, and Chicago on the first anniversary of the Stonewall riots.
> 
> 1973  
> -The American Psychiatric Association declares that homosexuality per se is not a psychiatric disorder.
> 
> 1979  
> -Over 100,000 people take part in the first March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights.
> 
> 1993  
> -President Bill Clinton signs a military policy directive that prohibits openly gay and lesbian Americans from serving in the military, but also prohibits the harassment of "closeted" homosexuals. The policy is known as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."
> 
> 2003  
> -The US Supreme Court strikes down the "homosexual conduct" law, which decriminalizes same-sex sexual conduct, with their opinion in Lawrence v. Texas.
> 
> 2010  
> -The asexual flag is created.
> 
> 2011  
> -"Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is repealed, ending a ban on gay men and lesbians from serving openly in the military.
> 
> 2012  
> -In an ABC interview on May 9, Obama becomes the first sitting US president to publicly support the freedom for LGBT couples to marry.
> 
> 2015  
> -On June 26, 2015, the White House was lit in rainbow lights to honor the Supreme Court decision to allow gay marriage.


End file.
